Most executives manage their companies as if the solution to that problem lies in the external environment: find an attractive market, formulate the right strategy and win new customers.

But when Bain & Company’s Chris Zook and James Allen, authors of the bestselling Profit from the Core, researched this question they found that when companies fail to achieve their growth targets 90 percent of the time the root causes are internal, not external — increasing distance from the front lines, loss of accountability, proliferating processes and bureaucracy, to name only a few.

What’s more, companies experience a set of predictable internal crises, at predictable stages, as they grow.

Even for healthy companies these crises, if not managed properly, stifle the ability to grow further — and can actively lead to decline.

The key insight from Zook and Allen’s research is that managing these choke points requires a “founder’s mentality” — behaviours typically embodied by a bold, ambitious founder — to restore speed, focus, and connection to customers:

An insurgent’s clear mission and purpose

An unambiguous owner mind-set

A relentless obsession with the front line

Based on the authors’ decade-long study of companies in more than forty countries, The Founder’s Mentality demonstrates the strong relationship between these three traits in companies of all kinds — not just start-ups — and their ability to sustain performance.

Through rich analysis and inspiring examples, this book shows how any leader — not only a founder — can instil and leverage a founder’s mentality throughout their organisation and find lasting, profitable growth.